Having declared that the theme for the year is “seeking strategies for survival, sanity, and success,” it seems fitting that its taken me until the 11th to come up with goals for the month. I’ve been too busy surviving. But I do better when I explicitly lay out goals for a month or so at a time. I post them here, I write them on my white board, and I keep them in my PDA. It helps keep me focused.

Here are my goals for the month:

Survival

Keep my head above water with my classes

Stay proactive on the Unbloggable Issue

Not give up blogging completely

Sanity

Take first two steps for my next (funded) project: (1) Inspect historical documents and figure out exactly what I have. (2) Determine what my software and hardware requirements actually are and acquire (access) to the necessary resources.

Plan and execute a simple birthday celebration for Minnow.*

Success

Substantially shorten and revise final dissertation chapter. Submit to co-authors for comments.

Send out thank you cards for those who sent Christmas and Minnow’s birthday gifts.**

*It’s not that she’ll know whether or not we throw her a party, but I will. I did something really extraordinary a year ago, and damn it, I deserve to celebrate. I’m just not sure with who. That’s what sucks about not having any friends around here. Plus, we’ll want to get the pictures for the end of her 365 project. And the mythical baby album.

**My mom is a freak about thank you cards. She raised me to believe that they were necessary for all gifts and even now she’ll harrass me if she doesn’t get a thank you card in an appropriate length of time (say 2 weeks). But I think it’s more important to thank the people outside my immediate family in a timely manner and that my parents and sibling should be understanding that I might not get a thank you written right away. Thus, I have to write all the thank you cards quickly, so that I feel OK and my mom doesn’t get on my case.

Comments

Hi Sciencewoman–
–just another data point for you: My kid got no birthday parties until he he was old enough to beg for them. And then we did the simplest ones possible. Also: Thank You cards? I’ve always figured those were an after-tenure luxury. And I can’t help but notice that my spouse has never considered them obligatory. However, I do believe in Thank You Phone Calls.
Good luck, and keep up the amazing juggling.

Good luck with the schedule! For kid #1 I gave a huge party, for #2 and #3, only a cake at home with the 4 (then 5) of us. Off topic: Did photo-post #50 ever get posted? Or did I simply miss it due to being far, far away?

Good list and good luck with your goals. I should make a similar list for myself. I tend to focus too much on the success type goals with the result that survival and sanity suffer immensely. We still haven’t sent out all the thank you cards to people who sent us wedding presents four months ago. That is making me feel guilty.

We just invited people we knew who had kids the same age (4 of them) and did a brunch, because it fell between everybody’s naps. Aside from the kid who had to have all-organic everything, which required a trek to the difficult to get to and expensive grocery, it was actually a lot of fun, since we invited our friends.

Happy Birthday to Minnow (and to Minnow’s Mom – it really is an achievement for you!)